Hellgoing: Stories. By Lynn Coady

By Friederike Knabe

Lynn Coady's award-winning book, Hellgoing, brings together nine
self-contained stories that take a realistic and thought-provoking look at a
wide range of human relationships in today's world. We are pushed or pulled
into something like a voyeur's role, observing in close-up fragments of ongoing
or evolving relationships between an array of distinct characters; be they as
couples, with family or friends, or crossing paths in professional or casual
encounters. Reading these stories can at times be a bit of a rough ride, rarely
smooth, easy or pleasant. While they might leave us with a sense of unease they
also stimulate us to consider more deeply the underlying questions and issues
that the author raises. Are they a reflection of contemporary reality or, at
minimum, of certain aspects of it? Among the comments on the book's back cover
the National Post's quote reflects my own experience closely: "...There is
a searing honesty here about humankind's inability or unwillingness, to make an
effort at connection, but the author's own humanity rescues her vision from
descending into despair or nihilism." I couldn't state my reaction any
better.

At the recent Ottawa International Writers' Festival Lynn Coady participated in an in depth discussion on short story
writing. The story from the collection
that she read that evening, "Mr. Hope", has remained etched in my
mind more than any of the others. It is written from the perspective of a young
female teacher, returning now to her first school, who is reliving her
childhood memories, her experiences in school and her first encounters with her
teacher, Mr. Hope. Coady exquisitely captures the feelings of a young girl.
Interweaving the vividly reimagined child's perception with that of the
hindsight of the adult looking back, the author tells a story that not only
conveys narrative tension and inner drama, she convincingly brings out the
girl's emotional confusion and conflicts in a way that will, in some way or another,
sound familiar to most readers.

Among the other stories, some characters stand out for me more than
others, such as the nun in a hospital who uses her counselling to get an
anorexic girl with a religious obsession to take "some food." The
title story tackles another important and well-known subject: deep and lasting family tensions going back
to the protagonist's childhood. A "reunion" brings them to the fore
as if the decades in between had been non-existent. Events, however, demand a
different response so many years later. While all stories are written from the
distance of a third person narrator, they do often cut through the surface of
the characters' 'normalcy' and expose what lies underneath.

Coady's stories
focus more on the women's mental state of mind than that of their male
counterparts. There is, for example, Erin who has discovered that
"twenty-something" sex is no longer adequate (or never was) and her
new partner is a willing if somewhat reluctant participant in the new excitements.
Coady pinpoints many of the ambitions and anxieties that younger women
experience, be they a publicity assistant whose constant texting might
interfere with more important news, or a young author participating in a
writers' retreat. While romantic love is totally absent from Coady's story
collection, however, she is an astute observer of people and scenarios and her
depiction of her central characters is not without a sense of humour or irony.